The extraordinary success of TIT FOR TAT leads to some simple, but powerful advice: practice reciprocity. After cooperating on the first move, TIT FO… - Robert Axelrod

" "

The extraordinary success of TIT FOR TAT leads to some simple, but powerful advice: practice reciprocity. After cooperating on the first move, TIT FOR TAT simply reciprocates whatever the other player did on the previous move. This simple rule is amazingly robust. It won the first round of the Computer Tournament for the Prisoner's Dilemma by attaining a higher average score than any other entry submitted by professional game theorists. And when this result was publicized for the contestants in the second round, TIT FOR TAT won again. The victory was obviously a surprise, since anyone could have submitted it to the second round after seeing its success in the first round. But obviously people hoped they could do better-and they were wrong.

English
Collect this quote

About Robert Axelrod

Robert Marshall Axelrod (born May 27, 1943) is an American political scientist and Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, best known for his interdisciplinary work on the evolution of cooperation.

Also Known As

Native Name: Robert Marshall Axelrod
Alternative Names: Robert M. Axelrod Axelrod
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI

Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Robert Axelrod

The Cooperation Theory that is presented in this book is based upon an investigation of individuals who pursue their own self-interest without the aid of a central authority to force them to cooperate with each other. The reason for assuming self-interest is that it allows an examination of the difficult case in which cooperation is not completely based upon a concern for others or upon the welfare of the group as a whole. It must, however, be stressed that this assumption is actually much less restrictive than it appears.

Aggregation means the organization of elements of a system into patterns that tend to put highly compatible elements together and less compatible elements apart. Landscape theory predicts how aggregation will lead to alignments among actors (such as nations), whose leaders are myopic in their assessments and incremental in their actions. The predicted configurations are based upon the attempts of actors to minimize their frustration based upon their pairwise propensities to align with some actors and oppose others. These attempts lead to a local minimum in the energy landscape of the entire system. The theory is supported by the results of the alignment of seventeen European nations in the Second World War. The theory has potential for application to coalitions of business firms, political parties in parliaments, social networks, social cleavages in democracies, and organizational structures.

Limited Time Offer

Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.

A major goal of investigating how cooperative norms in societal settings have been established is a better understanding of how to promote cooperative norms in international settings. This is not as utopian as it might seem because international norms against slavery and colonialism are already strong, while international norms are partly effective against racial discrimination, chemical warfare, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Because norms sometimes become established surprisingly quickly, there may be some useful cooperative norms that could be hurried along with relatively modest interventions.

Loading...